Using this method, you can install an entire Gentoo image complete with portage and overlay in about 15 minutes. The images were created immediately following a deep world update by russK. There are two versions and MD5 checksum files. One set for users with the stock bootloader and one set for those using U-Boot. They are stored in the Gentoo Downloads Section. Download the particular image for your installation.

Preparing for Install

Download needed files

You will need to download the desired gentoo image and the EM mode utilities from http://kurobox.com/downloads/gentoo. With the gentoo image, you have two images to choose from, depending on your bootloader.

Note, with a factory fresh box, you still might want to consider flashing uboot, as it offers the advantage of booting 2.6 kernels (without resorting to module tricks) and running a more current system. Read up on uboot on the wiki and the forums before you decide, as it could save you from re-doing things later. Some people might be perfectly happy sticking with the stock firmware while others would prefer to jump in and flash the uboot firmware. Please heed the warnings about making a brick before proceeding. To be absolutely carefree about flashing, you should have JTAG capability.

Install EM mode utilities

Start by using any FTP client to upload EM_mode_binaries.tar.bz2 (you can download it from http://kurobox.com/downloads/gentoo to /tmp on the Kuro (hint: Windows may change the extension of the file when you download it from the internet). Then login to the kuro using a telnet client

Partitioning & Formating the HDD

Note: The /etc/fstab file that comes with the Gentoo image is configured to work with
this hard drive partitioning scheme. If you want to use a different partitioning scheme
you must edit /etc/fstab accordingly. The flash contains the standard visual editor, vi.
instructions for using vi are available at http://www.cs.colostate.edu/helpdocs/vi.html .

We run fdisk and create partitions. I use four partitions: hda1 for /, hda2 for the swap space, hda3 for /var, and hda4 for data storage (/datafiles). This section from the Gentoo Handbook explains how to prepare your hard disk (create partitions). For most users, 10gb each for / on hda1 and /var on hda3 is adequate. 512mb is good for a swap space on hda2 and use the remainder for /datafiles on hda4. However, you can decide which way you want to break up your hard disk. Remember you need to mount all of the drives (except the swap and /datafiles) before you untar the image (More on that later).

# fdisk /dev/hda

Once the partitions are created we format the partitions. Here we format the first partition on /dev/hda (the hard drive is /dev/hda).

Install Gentoo Image

Mount new partitions

This will allow us to create the gentoo system on the hard drive instead of in the flash ram disk. We will create the directoy /gentoo mount /dev/hda1 there, then create /gentoo/var and mount /dev/hda3.

Extracting the Image

We then change directories to /gentoo and untar the image in what will be our root directory

# cd /gentoo
# tar xvjf <gentoo-image-name>

Once the image is untarred we can delete the image from /gentoo.

# rm *.bz2

Next we change add GENTOO_MIRRORS and SYNC lines in /etc/make.conf to suit your location. Pick the three nearest sites listed at http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml for your GENTOO_MIRRORS line. For Your SYNC line, your choices are namerica, samerica, europe, asia and au (australia) in place of namerica in my SYNC line.

Configure Network

Next we configure the network. If you want to use DHCP, you can skip this step as the image is configured for DHCP.

# cd conf.d
# vi net

If you want a static IP address you need to uncomment a couple of lines. Scroll down to the section INTERFACE HANDLERS and uncomment the following lines. In the example I have set the IP address to 192.168.0.9, the network mask to 255.255.255.0, and the gateway to 192.168.0.1. Do not uncomment the default via 4321:0:1:2:3:4:567:89ab". You will want to change the IP address, subnet mask, and gateway address to suit your network.

Last, if anything was updated and portage says we need to update our config files we run etc-update. Don't do this blindly as you can easily break your brand new system. You need to understand what the configuration files mean and choose what lines you want to edit.